Game on: How you can play & and win this season

This time of the year always brings renewed excitement—whether you’re organizing a watch party, making game-day predictions, or just simply tuning in for the action. The real challenge? Thinking like a coach, anticipating plays, and making strategic decisions that could draw the line between victory and defeat.

Even the best athletes don’t just rely on their physique. They analyze their opponents, adapt to situations, and make calculated moves under pressure. In other words, they also develop their strategic skills. And you, too, can have the same kind of strategic thinking that wins championships.

These strategic skills can be sharpened in a place you might not expect: online strategy games. While there’s nothing wrong with more crossword games, strategy games may help you understand your favorite sport better. They help you answer challenges and outmaneuver the competition—just like in real sports.

Play them to prepare for the big sports season ahead. And if you’re hosting a game day gathering, why not invite your buddies and family to also try these brain games out? Here are some of the best online strategy games to sharpen your mind.

Sudoku

You can learn a lot from a game where you fill a grid so that each row, column, and 3×3 box contains the numbers 1-9 without repeating. Sudoku is a classic number puzzle that requires logical reasoning and pattern recognition, training your brain to see opportunities before they happen. In sports, recognizing patterns can be the key to gaining an edge.

Block Champ

Block Champ requires you to arrange Tetris-style blocks on a grid to clear rows and prevent the board from filling up. But this game can also train your brain to imagine positioning players on a field or court. It reinforces your spatial awareness and decision-making skills under pressure; you must have a good strategy now to prevent problems later, something any coach needs to anticipate.

Mahjongg Solitaire

In Mahjongg Solitaire, you match pairs of identical tiles to clear the board while navigating layered tile arrangements. By matching tiles, you can identify key patterns and think a few moves ahead. This is a skill directly applicable to sports, where recognizing formations and predicting the opponent’s next move can lead to game-changing decisions.

MathDoku

MathDoku is kind of like Sudoku on steroids. It’s the same “solve number puzzles” as Sudoku, but the guiding placement contains arithmetic logic. The game requires fast calculations and strategic placement of numbers, sharpening your problem-solving skills. Even coaches and athletes must adjust their game plan on the fly based on unexpected situations.

2048

Can sliding numbered tiles to combine like values and aiming to reach the 2048 tile before running out of space train your brain? It can, because you need to plan several moves ahead to reach that coveted 2048 tile. It’s similar to how championship teams don’t just think about the next match, but also the entire season.

Chess

Few games teach strategy better than chess. This game itself qualifies as a real-life sport. As you shift pieces across a checkered board with the goal of checkmating your rival’s king, your every move must be planned with the enemy’s counterplay in mind. This is not so different from how coaches and players anticipate defensive adjustments in sports to stay ahead of the competition.

Word Wipe

The clock ticks in Word Wipe as the game urges you to find as many words as possible. This makes you scan the board quickly to identify patterns and constantly adapt strategies—all vital skills for sports, where fast decision-making can determine the result of the game before the buzzer sounds.

For even more ways to test your skills and stay sharp between game days, explore more games on WTOP.